595
submitted 1 week ago by girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to c/news@lemmy.world

A decade after the Flint, Michigan, water crisis raised alarms about the continuing dangers of lead in tap water, President Joe Biden is setting a 10-year deadline for cities across the nation to replace their lead pipes, finalizing an aggressive approach aimed at ensuring that drinking water is safe for all Americans.

Biden is expected to announce the final Environmental Protection Agency rule Tuesday in the swing state of Wisconsin during the final month of a tight presidential campaign. The announcement highlights an issue — safe drinking water — that Kamala Harris has prioritized as vice president and during her presidential campaign. The new rule supplants a looser standard set by former President Donald Trump’s administration that did not include a universal requirement to replace lead pipes.

Biden and Harris believe it’s “a moral imperative” to ensure that everyone has access to clean drinking water, EPA Administrator Michael Regan told reporters Monday. “We know that over 9 million legacy lead pipes continue to deliver water to homes across our country. But the science has been clear for decades: There is no safe level of lead in our drinking water.’'

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

So all plumbers are going to have to become... what, coperrers?

Edit: copper is cuprum in latin, so cuprer?

[-] Sludgehammer@lemmy.world 91 points 1 week ago

Dang... and the free market was just about get around to replacing those pipes too.

[-] RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

Damn. That is cynical AF.

I love it.

[-] VubDapple@lemmy.world 76 points 1 week ago

Didn't the corrupt supreme court just take away Chevron Deference? This needed rule will be disqualified by the captured courts.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 54 points 1 week ago

Trump will mandate more lead pipes. "They took the sweetness out of the water! Water used to be sweet! It isn't sweet anymore! We like sweet water, don't we, folks?"

[-] SeaJ@lemm.ee 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

That honestly would not surprise me if he did allow lead. He thinks asbestos is 100% safe and is only being removed because the mob lobbied for it to get the construction contracts.

And let's not forget that Reagan wanted to reverse banning the use of lead and had a study commissioned to show how much money it would save the economy. The person writing the report decided to add in the massive negative health and societal consequences of removing the ban which showed a huge cost to the economy by removing the ban.

[-] tiefling@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 1 week ago

Trump is straight up trying to kill Americans. He is Russia's most dangerous bioweapon

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Cruxifux@feddit.nl 50 points 1 week ago

I mean good, but also Jesus Christ how is this even an issue in the states?

[-] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 week ago

It's expensive and time consuming to replace pipes. Many cities don't have accurate maps of their pipes either. The actual danger from the existing pipes is extremely low under normal circumstances.

[-] Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

You've met us, right? Don't we seem a little off? Now you know why.

[-] EtherWhack@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Along with the other reasons, people were relatively content with the excuse that the layer of buildup within the pipes would protect from the lead.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

People forget that the proximate cause of the lead contamination in Flint wasn't the pipes themselves (which had been in use, relatively safely, for decades), but instead that locals in charge of the water system got forcibly replaced with an emergency manager appointed by the (Republican) governor, who ordered the system to be switched from sourcing water from Detroit (Lake Huron) to the Flint River to save money and failed to treat it with the usual corrosion-control additives that Detroit had been using.

To blame the pipes is to let the Republicans off the hook for their miserliness, incompetence and systemic racism.

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/flint-water-crisis-everything-you-need-know

https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/2016/01/epa_official_says_he_was.html

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/chemical-study-ground-zero-house-flint-water-crisis-180962030/

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] Erasmus@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Big business pays off everyone from the top down to ignore that the issue is killing everyone, from the top down.

load more comments (23 replies)
[-] tiefling@lemmy.blahaj.zone 46 points 1 week ago

I expect SCROTUS to overturn this by saying Americans have the right to lead contaminated water, and if they don't like it they can buy Nestle™ distilled water

Coincidentally, all the conservative justices will be taking a 6 month long all expenses paid cruise around the world

[-] Revan343@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 days ago

Lol, Nestle doesn't distill shit, it's just bottled tap water

[-] skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 1 week ago

they can buy Nestle™ distilled water

Hah, they don't waste the energy to distill it. They just pump it up from the ground on the other side of Michigan, filter it, and ship it back out. (As well as many other places where Nestle steals water.)

[-] Microplasticbrain@lemm.ee 36 points 1 week ago

Wow so ambitious, and then as we near the deadline we can extend it by 10 years!

[-] Doom@ttrpg.network 13 points 1 week ago

well we only have 50 years left so they only gotta push this off like three times and then it won't matter

[-] eskimofry@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

Actually if trump gets elected that plan is going to get shelved entirely. Way worse.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 week ago

Only 10 more years to enjoy that good old water with a tinge of "Roman sweet".

[-] pfwood178@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 week ago

My town's water system still has some "pipes" in use that are actually hollow logs.

[-] TunaLobster@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago

My fluids professor told us about that when someone asked why do we have wood on the material roughness tables. No one believed him so he brought in a small section of a wood pipe he took from a construction site.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 10 points 1 week ago

So you gonna replace them with lead pipes first, right?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[-] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

My city just did the lead pipe replacement. I did not do my house feed because I can’t swing 16k 6 months after they announced plans to do it (that’s also fully 1/4 of what I originally paid for the whole house 10 years ago, and I’m still making payments on that -I’m in a very low COL area, 40k is really good pay here, I usually make around 30k when I’m able to work-, so that is a SUBSTANTIAL amount of money for me), cuz yeah the city doesn’t cover from the main line into the house.. (I do have a reverse osmosis unit, however, because I’ve known about the lead pipes since I bought the place, and all my drinking or cooking water goes through that, so I’m not like consuming lead all the time, just microplastics..)

When I told them I can’t afford it because I’m unemployed and disabled, they told me I should just take out a loan for it. Yeah, because that’s a great idea when you don’t have money or know when you might… increase your monthly money needs! Brilliant! They then said I’ll have to do it by 2028 or my water will be shut off… cool, that makes me feel a lot better about being fucking broke.

So like I’m totally on board with replacing them, but holy fuck does it suck for the affected areas. To say nothing of 4 months of constant structure-shaking construction.

[-] baru@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

In Rotterdam (Netherlands) they're replacing the sewage system. People get a letter that they're responsible for the bit on their ground. In practice the city also handled the line to the house.

I don't understand why in your area they'd not take care of that bit. With everything mostly open it should be much easier anyway.

That the city doesn't promise anything is likely for things like liability and unique/expensive exceptions. But not doing that in practice, so strange.

[-] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

They decided to repair the sidewalks last year, just out of nowhere, and tacked the amount on to your property tax as a special assessment if you didn’t make arrangements of your own to have someone come out and fix it when they wanted it fixed by. Any little crack was enough for them to demand you rip out the whole slab, even though the sidewalks have been in disrepair for over a decade, so they clearly didn’t care before. It was not a fun surprise when the flyer came that basically said “these are the slabs we’ve decided to replace, this is what we are going to charge you, you have to pay the full amount this year.”

And like, I know sidewalks are sort of a gray area, but I already take care of them (clear leaves, snow, etc) and stuff, I shouldn’t also have to privately pay for them to be maintained on my property when I can’t choose not to have them..

So like my area is good for a lot of things, but that definitely isn’t one of them. I’m pretty sure because it’s a conservative area, the money is being intentionally funneled into specific companies doing the work, and they can’t charge nearly as much if the city picks up the tab. Probably friends with or bribing the people making decisions..

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] Donebrach@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

I cant beleive how political lemmy is. cant we just have our lead pipes in peace and not have to deal with the politics about the made up story that lead pipes are bad ??

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] Mobiledecay@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

I mean Flint's problems were caused by switching the water source to save money, not lead pipes. However, replacing lead pipes would be great as well. Most drinking water in America is very safe though. It just tastes like crap.

[-] TeoTwawki@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

if the pipes hadn't been lead the water switch would not have triggered the issue. we had 3 contributing factors: old lead pipes, water source change, and people in charge that made a decision they should not have been able to make with little to no consequences for doing it.

Guess which ones out of those 3 we actually have the power to act on.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] sebsch@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 1 week ago

you Americans have ... what?

What's next? Asbestos in your toilet paper?

[-] KrankyKong@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

Where are you from? Lead pipes are still a thing most everywhere unfortunately. A relic of the past. They aren't used for new construction, but they are a problem with older infrastructure.

[-] sebsch@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I am from Berlin Germany. Just looked it up and no. The main grid is 100% free from lead.

https://www.bwb.de/de/wasseranalyse.php

Edit: may be a German thing. We value tab water really high. The quality standards are higher than from bottled water.

[-] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

Germany banned Lead Pipes in the southern region over a century ago but elsewhere still installed them in homes until 1973 and started regulating lead content in water in 2013, at which time A LOT of infrastructure was removed and replaced.

Still, many people are not aware of the lead pipe problem. "Drinking water in Germany is generally of high quality, and that's the message people take with them," says Karin Gerhardy, of the German Technical and Scientific Association for Gas and Water (DVGW), which works closely with water suppliers and authorities.

[-] KrankyKong@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

Well that's good. I was reading that in the UK, they still have lead pipes, but they don't repair them. If they have to repair it, they just replace it. I imagine it's the same here. No one's laying new lead pipes anywhere that I know of.

[-] PresidentCamacho@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago

Hmmmm, lead water from my bidet, or asbestos toilet paper, which will poison my poor asshole quicker I wonder?

[-] thebigslime@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

I used to live in a town where ~10% of water lines were still wood, if I recall correctly.

[-] Evotech@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

10 years is "someone else's problem" timeframe

[-] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 week ago

Feels like without the legislature this is something that's way too easy to overturn

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] harmsy@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

On the bright side, if Miami has any lead pipes, they're about to get a head start on digging them out.

[-] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 9 points 1 week ago

The only pipelines we should be building

Yeah, we'll see how quickly they extend that deadline.

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
595 points (99.5% liked)

News

23150 readers
3563 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS